In September 2011 I posted about an Ohio farmer that planted into “out of control” peas and shared about his story of how the field was looking pre-harvest. I have recently visited with Dave (the producer) and he shared the information that a number of you asked for…and also surprising yield data. Dave farms with […]

Meet the Cover Crop Scavengers Over the years I have worked with cover crops I have recommended that producers use “scavengers” like Annual Ryegrass, turnips, cereal rye, winter barley, oats, and cover crop radishes. These cover crops do a very good job of capturing excess nitrogen and other nutrients and keeping them from reaching the […]

CISCO Seeds, Robison Farms, and Dougherty Fertilizer are sponsoring a Cover Crop Field Day and Root Dig at the Greenwood, Indiana farm. If you’ve not had an opportunity to see cover crops in a real life farm setting, this will be a great meeting for you . There will be multiple species available to look […]

The Crimson clover had dense roots and we found a number of them at over 40″ deep. At cover crop field days over the past few weeks many interesting aspects of cover crops were revealed. One reminder about cover crops; it is NOT what is above ground that is the best indicator of success. Please […]

In this post we look at two more videos of mixes on December 2, 2010. This first mix in this session is of Austrian Winter Peas and GroundHog Radishes. The seeding rate is 30# Peas and 5# of Radish per acre. The main thing we observe in this plot is the larger radishes than we […]

The first day of December brought the first day of snow in northern Indiana. After the inch or so of snow and some Arctic air the cover crops are shutting down. Over the past three weeks we received around 5″ of rain so the cover crops were actually growing fairly well heading into December. Now […]

The video below shows the value of Crimson Clover in a cover crop setting. Crimson clover has been tested and shown to produce as much as 140#/N after it has been planted after wheat. The plots in this video were planted around July 29, 2010 by the Jasper and Newton County SWCD folks (Thanks Dan […]

Over the past number of weeks I’ve noticed quite a difference in radishes growing in farmers fields. Some are outstanding and consistent; deep and fairly large tubers (tuber girth seems to be related to fertility and age of stand). In the thumb of Michigan I saw over 300 acres of fields planted at 10#/acre that […]

I have been visiting a farm in eastern Whitley County Indiana over the past month and have seen a few fields of an Austrian Winter Pea/Radish mixture. These fields were wheat fields that had dairy manure knifed into them after they had been harvested and deep tilled. The video shows what a great stand the […]